Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  “I…” he began, wanting to apologise for laughing, but the eyes shut, the chest stopped moving with a final hiss of breath. “Shit.”

  He looked up, swiping snow from his eyes, and looked around the corner, where the narrow path opened up into a small plateau edged still with that dizzying drop. A glance was all it took, then he was on his feet, hand reaching for his sword, all thoughts of dead women or aching hips forgotten.

  Petri grinned under the mask that hid the good side of his face, parried a poor thrust and returned the favour with more accuracy.

  Blood splattered the snow all over the small plateau where they’d herded the prelate’s guards. No room for them to manoeuvre, no way back that wasn’t covered by archers and crossbowmen, no way forward except through Petri and a dozen others, and a precipitous drop to one side if they were careless.

  Morro had driven them into the defile with vicious wind and snow. The captain had been cautious where the trail narrowed, but not cautious enough. Arrows had taken the captain’s scout; a flurry of crossbow bolts had driven the rest of them on, taken horses from under them and left them floundering in the snow ready for Petri and the rest to finish off.

  Scar whirled across the snow, face fixed in a rigid grin as she fought. Kepa threw a man over the side and looked on as he bounced down the drop, and Petri watched, and wondered who it was that was watching.

  They had them now, this band of poorly prepared men and women. They’d leave one or two alive, to tell the tale and spread the fear even further, back to Reyes and the prelate, but not one of Scar’s crew had a qualm–these guards had been sent to kill them. Petri had no illusions about that and no hesitation in returning the intent.

  Four of the guards stood, backs to the cliff that bounded one side of the plateau, fending off anyone who tried for them. Four people, including the captain. Scar’s crew stepped back and let Petri through.

  “God’s cogs,” he heard the captain mutter when he caught sight of Petri’s face.

  “The Clockwork God has nothing to do with it,” he snapped back. “Weapons down.”

  The captain grimaced at that but looked about and saw the hopelessness of it. “Do it.” He flung his sword into the snow with a look of twisted disgust, as though he might try to do something stupid anyway.

  Three more dropped. The woman hurled something at Petri, at his blind side, but Scar knocked it away and smacked the woman in the face for her trouble, told her she’d get the sword next time.

  A scream echoed off the mountain behind him, and Petri whipped round. They’d missed one, must have, because a man was slicing through Scar’s crew from behind with alarming ease. Two men had fallen dead even before Petri had turned, and as he did a third man pitched screaming over the edge from a well timed boot to the gut.

  Petri couldn’t see the man’s face behind the frost-crusted furs, but he didn’t need to. The preening style, the over-elaborate flourishes, even the style of footwork. His face flashed hot and then cold, and an icy hand gripped his stomach. Not just a prelate’s guard. Vocho. And where there was Vocho, there’d be Kass, maybe more guildsmen too. Scar’s crew might be improving but they had no chance against the guild.

  And there Kass was, no mistaking her, not ever. He found his hand had slackened its grip on his sword, found he’d taken half a step towards her before he even thought about it. Scar’s voice brought him up short, made him remember.

  He’d wanted to show Kass, worst of all. Show her who he really was, that he wasn’t weak, never weak. Wanted to show her too how little he cared that she’d abandoned him, that he could be someone without her in his life. Kepa went for her, but Petri’s growl stopped him, stopped Morro too, who had drawn out a slip of paper and a brush and was preparing who knew what.

  “No,” Petri said. “Not this one.” Morro and Kepa both cocked a look at Scar, who nodded, and they stood back.

  Vocho headed Petri’s way, but his eyes were on the woman guard, distracted. Petri was never going to have a better chance at the grandstanding little prick and dived forward, sword out. Killing Vocho the Great would be a fitting way to gain a name and a grand message to send to Bakar, along with Vocho’s head perhaps. A show of strength to Morro too, who hovered at his back like a malignant cloud.

  Vocho’s sword came up in the nick of time, but he staggered, and now Petri could see he was favouring one leg. Petri drove forward again, kept Vocho with his weight all on the back leg, the bad one. But that was never going to be enough for Petri to beat him, not left-handed. Vocho ducked away from the thrust, and then they were in the thick of it, just the two of them. Petri kept up the pressure on the leg, but Vocho used every trick he could against Petri’s blind side, against the inexperience of his left hand. Played with him because even with a halt leg he should have been able to beat Petri. But after every flashy thrust or lightning-quick parry, his eyes would dart sideways to the guards and back again, as though making sure they were watching.

  It was unlike Vocho, who usually just assumed everyone would be watching him, and left him open, but even so Petri wasn’t going to beat him, not this time, not with his off hand. Not unless he did something drastic.

  He stood back, raised his sword in the guild way of asking for a halt. Vocho cocked his head but did likewise, though he kept himself ready for whatever trick Petri might pull.

  Petri peeled off the mask that covered the good side of his face, and the way Vocho gaped and sagged backwards was worth almost everything. Almost. The look on Kass’s face as she moved up behind her brother was better, and satisfyingly sweet. She dropped the stiletto from her off hand, raising her fingers to her horror-struck mouth.

  “Hello, Kass,” he said. “It seems I’m not as dead as you thought.”

  Kass couldn’t seem to think straight. A man with one side of Petri’s face, with his voice, stood in front of her, and she couldn’t think past the thundering in her ears. Petri was dead, hadn’t Vocho told her…

  Vocho had told her. A man for whom lying was as natural as breathing. But even Vocho wouldn’t lie about… would he? Her head whirled to keep up, as everything she thought she knew was suddenly like quicksand under her feet. But it didn’t matter because Petri was here and alive and she hadn’t failed. She started towards him, not knowing what she’d do when she got there but with a bubble of laughter in her throat.

  A woman spoke, not a voice she recognised, and then someone barrelled into her, a blade flashed in front of her face, and they were rolling in the snow. Kass flailed for her dropped stiletto but all she found was snow.

  “Leave him alone,” a woman’s voice snarled into her ear. “Haven’t you made him suffer enough? He’s mine now.”

  Kass managed to heave herself over, threw the other woman off to sprawl in the snow. Now Kass could see the scar that ripped over her face, puckered and twisted at one end like frayed rope, and knew her for who she was.

  No time to get the stiletto from where she saw it in the snow, but time enough to get her own sword out before Scar scrambled to her feet. Someone shouted off to one side, a voice she recognised this time, but she didn’t take the time to listen to what it was they said. Scar was on her in a flash, the puckered flesh twisting even further with a grimace.

  No finesse to her, no guile, just all-out brute force and anger so that Kass could barely keep her feet for the rain of blows she had to parry. A glimpse of movement before something, someone, crashed into the pair of them and sent Kass tumbling, end over end, over the edge of the path and down into the chasm on the other side.

  Vocho was halfway to Kass when the well timed swipe of a sword in front of his face brought him up short, and he was confronted with the half-dead half-alive face of Petri bloody Egimont. Of course, it had to be, didn’t it? Just Vocho’s luck. Couldn’t have been any of the other possibilities, oh no, just the one that would earn him a hole in his gut from his sister when she got hold of him.

  Petri’s one eye gleamed deep in a shadowed socket, a taunting s
mile across ruined lips, and for the first time Vocho considered that maybe Petri might be a dangerous man to cross.

  He might have discovered right then whether that was true if Eder hadn’t chosen that moment to let out a wild yell, punch out the man holding him and dive towards where Kass was trying her best to parry what looked like a windmill made of swords. Vocho had time to shout a word of warning–to Eder, not Kass, because she’d skin him alive if he interfered–but not soon enough.

  Eder slammed into Scar just as she turned and knocked her flying before he barrelled past and on into Kass, his speed and weight carrying the two of them over the edge.

  A long moment of silence followed. Vocho didn’t know about anyone else, but he was frozen in place. The cold had finally, irrevocably seeped into his bones and seized him up, or so it seemed. Then everyone started moving. A big bald-headed man ran to the edge and peered over. Scar got to her feet, brushing snow from her legs and looking like she wanted to murder someone. A couple of others decided to take things out on their prisoners. More turned to Petri, their looks questioning.

  Only one man looked anything like composed, and the way he looked at Petri made even Vocho’s shoulders twitch. Worse when he saw the man hastily drag on gloves, and the smell of cooking blood wafted over. Magicians. Vocho had hoped to live his life without ever meeting one again, and he couldn’t see Petri working with one willingly either. Yet here one was, smug as a well fed cat and looking at Petri like he was some kind of experiment.

  “Kepa?” Petri called to the bald man over by the chasm. His voice sounded odd to Vocho, but everything was odd–his face was numb and not from cold, his hands were shaking and every muscle felt made of water. It was all he could do to stand up and hold on to his lunch.

  “Not sure yet,” came the muffled reply as the bald man lay down and stretched out over the edge.

  Others went to look, or called out “helpful” comments.

  “They ain’t moving,” the bald giant called out eventually, and the bottom dropped out of Vocho’s world. Only the fact that Petri was there stopped him from falling down–he wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. Vocho groped around blindly, not knowing what for, not caring, only wanting something to do with his hands, something to hang on to and stop him being pulled away by the black hole inside him.

  His sword, he still had his sword, always dependable, never let him down. He held on to it with everything he had and thought about running Petri through, making him as dead as he was supposed to be. If Kass was gone, there was nothing to stop him, no explanations required, no need to feel guilty because he’d killed the one thing she’d loved. He blinked back to the snowy mountain, to the sight of Petri’s ruined face and the magician watching them both, hand ready on a redly dripping brush. Half a dozen men and women with swords drawn, more than one with a gun, and him with a gimped leg. Not now then. Bide his time, yes, make it worth all the more.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Cospel and Danel lurking almost out of sight. Cospel waggled his eyebrows in a way that Vocho took to mean, “Maybe time to go?”

  He’d have been right, except for the prick of a sword at the back of Vocho’s neck, the low growl in his ear from Petri that raised every hair on his nape and the way that half a dozen men were eyeing him with something like gleeful anticipation.

  “Weapon down, please,” Petri said in that cultured drawl that annoyed Vocho no end. “Or you can follow your lovely sister over that cliff. It won’t be a bother. Kepa is more than capable of throwing you a good distance. In fact, I’d rather enjoy that.”

  Kass came back to the here and now and wondered what in hell she was lying on, and why. A drawn-out groan gave her a clue to the first.

  There was snow everywhere–in front of her, above, in her eyes, mouth, ears. There should be snow under her too, but if so it was very lumpy. She sat up gingerly against the sudden throb in her head that made the snow zigzag in front of her eyes. Whatever she was on, it was very lumpy indeed, and something sharp was digging into her.

  The groan again, somewhat indistinct but definitely from underneath. She rolled away from–off–whatever was sticking in her and checked herself over. Apart from a head that felt like it was fit to burst and an accompanying dizziness that made angles look funny, she thought she’d got away with only a multitude of bruises. Which meant she’d got off pretty lightly, considering. She looked up again, wincing at the throb in her neck and head, and felt dizzy all over again at how far she’d fallen. And how far the sun had moved since then, gone from the small wedge of sky she could make out in the gloom.

  What the hell had happened to send her over the edge? Had Scar come too? That thought–that Scar might well be down here–made her hand go to her sword, only to find an empty scabbard. It had been in her hand when she fell but wasn’t now. It had been in her hand, and she’d been fighting Scar, and then something had barrelled into her, and then all she recalled was an empty space underneath her, snow all around falling with her.

  Another groan caught her attention more sharply this time, because maybe she wasn’t the only one to have fallen down here and lived.

  The heap of snow and clothes she’d just rolled off–what she’d landed on, which had probably saved her from broken bones or worse–groaned again and shifted. Kass cast about and saw her sword, hilt jutting from a great jumbled pile of snow. She felt a lot braver with it than without.

  On closer inspection, the heap appeared to be a small pile of bodies liberally strewn with snow. Only one was moving, the one on top–she wasn’t the only one to have had her fall broken, it seemed. At least one of the others had a broken neck, if the way its head flopped at an unnatural angle was anything to go by.

  The groaner moved, a shifting veil of snow slid off its face, and Kass let out a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. Not Scar–at least this particular body wasn’t her. Eder wiped snow from his mouth, tried to sit up and fell back onto his elbows with a hiss of pain.

  Kass moved towards him, still keeping a weather eye out for Scar. She tried to figure out the tangle of arms and legs that poked out of the snow at odd angles. A foot here, a knee there at a right angle to it, and it almost made her eyes cross when she realised they belonged to the same leg.

  “Who’s there?” Eder whispered, his eyes still unfocused. She must have caught him a hell of a whack when she landed on him–with her own head, it felt like.

  She looked around again, watching for any movement that would give away Scar, and crept towards him.

  “It’s Kass. Lie still. You’ve had a crack to the head, and I think your leg’s broken.”

  “I think so too.” Eder tried again to push himself upright and failed as dismally as before.

  “Eder, I don’t know where Scar is.”

  He squinted at her, grimaced at the movement and shut his eyes. “I… I’m not sure if she came down with us. Someone appears to be under me? That feels very much like an elbow in my kidneys.”

  It was indeed an elbow, but not Scar’s. “He’s probably why we aren’t both dead. But I can’t see her, under you or anywhere else. Or any tracks or anything.”

  She looked back up. The drop was almost sheer apart from a couple of outcrops near the top which were shedding clumps of snow that burst at the bottom like feathery bombs. If Kass squinted, she could perhaps see a face far above against the fading light. Maybe. Then again maybe it was a bird. And Voch was up there, him and Cospel and Danel on their own against Scar and Petri and all their crew. Voch might very well be dead already. She looked away from the lip and tried to concentrate on here, now. Vocho would be fine. He always was. Always. He’d go on being fine if she told herself enough. Anything else didn’t bear thinking about, so she didn’t. Not yet. Later, in the dark, those thoughts would chase each other around her skull, but not now.

  Eder made it to sitting on the third try, though the effort left him white and shaking. “Well that takes care of one problem, I hope. She’d didn
’t fall with us, or not all the way.”

  “Speaking of which, what in hell did you think you were doing?” Kass moved over to take a closer look at the leg and wished she hadn’t. So did Eder, who shut his eyes and swallowed hard, spat and swallowed again.

  “Not this, I assure you. I thought to knock her over the side, but you both shifted at the last second.”

  “I had it all under control.”

  Eder tried a shaky laugh that tailed off into a hitching gasp. “Typical guild arrogance. No, you didn’t. She’d have beaten you, and you’d be down here with a broken, if stiff with supercilious pride, neck. You can thank me later. For now, how bad is it?”

  Kass bit back the retort that sprang to mind–if she was any judge they were trapped down here together, especially if she didn’t abandon him, which was tempting but no, not the good thing. They were trapped, and the Clockwork God alone knew what trouble Voch was in up there. So instead of snapping back, she wiped her sword of the snow that dripped from it, sheathed it and braced herself to look at the leg.

  Her stiletto had gone, left far above, so Eder dragged out his knife and handed it wordlessly to her so that she could cut away the breeches below his knee.

  “That’s, er, that’s not good.” Through the skin she could see where the bone had snapped, leaving the ankle at a stomach-churning angle to the leg above. Below the break his leg and foot were already starting to darken.

  Eder snorted in disgust. “Really? How surprising. Maybe you could not patronise me and elaborate instead?”

  “Fine,” she snapped back. “You’re fucked. Happy?”

  A long silence before Eder began to laugh, all ragged at the edges like he was coming apart at the seams. “One extreme to another,” he said at last. “Shouldn’t have expected anything else from you, I suppose. Damn you and damn your bloody guild as well.”